Odd Man In

Jack Klugman brings a new voice and new-found ability to cry to ‘The Value of Names.’

By: Anthony Stoeckert
   Jack Klugman seems to have an opinion about everything. From the price of canned soup ("Three dollars! I make a batch of it for $4, it’ll last six weeks…") to the state of today’s television sitcoms ("There’s no freedom now, they talk about b—s and show their a—s, they’re not funny…") to his distaste for the Bush administration (he was in Florida during the 2000 election and wanted to protest, but couldn’t find a protest to join), he talks with honesty and passion.
   He’s particularly passionate about his work, especially on stage and especially in The Value of Names, in which he’s performing with his friend Dan Lauria at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick Nov. 14 to Dec. 17. Recently, Mr. Klugman announced he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, adding that doctors are expecting a full recovery and that his treatment won’t interfere with his commitment to the play.
   Mr. Klugman performed in The Value of Names before and suggested it to George Street after doing a reading of Contact with the Enemy with Eli Wallach and Joyce Van Patten last spring as part of George Street’s Next Stage Festival.
   The Value of Names, written by Jeffrey Sweet, revolves around Benny (Mr. Klugman), an actor who was blacklisted during the McCarthy-era witch hunts. Benny’s name was given to investigators by his friend, a director named Leo (played by Mr. Lauria). Years later, Leo is directing Benny’s daughter, Norma (Liz Larsen), and wants to make amends.
   In an interview at George Street before a mid-October rehearsal, Mr. Klugman talked about the premise of the play and how it’s influenced by real incidents from the blacklist’s history. He says the writer Clifford Odets told Lee J. Cobb and John Garfield that he was going to name them since they had already been named, and they were fine with that.
   "This is what (Leo) did, he called (Benny), but (Benny) said, ‘No, don’t use my name, I have a career going here,’" Mr. Klugman says. "But he used it anyway and put (Benny) out of work. It’s all in the past, and now we confront it. Do I forgive him? He’s made up with other guys that he named, they’ve become friends, but I can’t forgive him."
   As an actor who later worked with Odets, Cobb and Garfield (in a 1952 revival of The Golden Boy) and knew the fear they lived with and how friendships and careers were ruined by the blacklist, Mr. Klugman is particularly fond of a speech Benny has in the play. About acting, Benny says: "You have to do it with other people in the presence of other people, and if someone cuts you off from them, you’re no longer an actor."
   "You don’t know how good you can be," Mr. Klugman says of the character’s point of view. "Your life is just cut off because you don’t know if you can be Lee Cobb in ‘Death of a Salesman.’ And that’s the terrible thing (Benny) lived with all these years." Sure, Benny can take a TV job and make money, but because of the blacklist, he lost his chance to discover just how good he could have been.
   "And that’s what drew me to the play," Mr. Klugman says.
   For Mr. Lauria’s part, the actor isn’t playing Leo as a villain. He sees the character as someone like the director Elia Kazan, who named names and went on to do great work in theater and film. When it’s mentioned how some people didn’t applaud Mr. Kazan when he was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1999, Mr. Klugman says emphatically, "I wouldn’t have applauded him."
   "Not only am I playing it that I don’t feel guilty, I feel that I didn’t lie," Mr. Lauria says. "I didn’t give a name that wasn’t at those meetings. I did what I thought was the right thing. If you read what Kazan did, I’m going along with that. Time’s passed, and out of respect for my work I was hoping to regain friends… We’re closer to the end than the beginning (of life). I want to forget about that and have my friends back."
   Both actors are best known for their work in television (Mr. Klugman in The Odd Couple and Quincy M.E., Mr. Lauria in The Wonder Years), but as with so many actors, theater remains their true love.
   "No real actor ever leaves the stage," says Mr. Lauria, who performed in A Stone Carver at Passage Theatre Company in Trenton last spring; Mr. Lauria and the play went on to an off-Broadway run. "You do some good work in television in L.A., there are a lot of good theater actors out there, and then you see (them on television), and it’s all cut up… In theater you can’t do that."
   Mr. Klugman has been working on stage since the 1950s, even performing in plays during breaks from The Odd Couple and Quincy M.E. Before he became a television star, he was on Broadway in The Golden Boy, The Odd Couple (replacing Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison) and in Gypsy with Ethel Merman.
   But in 1989, after he underwent throat surgery because of cancer of the larynx, he thought his acting career was over. It was his friend and Odd Couple co-star Tony Randall who got him back to work — Mr. Klugman shared that story in his memoir Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship.
   Mr. Randall was one of the first people to visit him in the hospital, and when Mr. Klugman said he didn’t have a voice, Mr. Randall said, "’You never did sound like Richard Burton anyway,’" according to Mr. Klugman.
   "He said he’d find a venue for me when I was ready," Mr. Klugman says. "I said, ‘Yeah, you’ll find a venue for an actor without a voice.’" Mr. Randall then arranged for a one-time performance of The Odd Couple on Broadway, which happened in 1991.
   The night of that performance, actors were getting big laughs during the opening poker scene of the play. When Mr. Klugman came on stage and started talking, the audience members began getting uncomfortable, shuffling in their seats.
   "I said, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to get through this evening,’" Mr. Klugman says. "Then about two minutes later I have a line. There were brown sandwiches and green sandwiches, and (when) they asked what the green is, I said ‘Either very new cheese or very old meat.’ And they laughed, they adjusted. And I gave the best performance, because if you lose one arm, the other gets stronger." The result was an eight-minute standing ovation. "It was the best night of my life."
   He has little interest in television and film today and doesn’t think highly of what’s on the boob tube. When a discussion of Peter Boyle’s talents develops, Mr. Klugman makes a blunt comment about Everybody Loves Raymond, the show Mr. Boyle acted on for nine seasons.
   "He is wonderful," Mr. Klugman says of Mr. Boyle. "That goddamned series he did, he was the only good thing on it."
   Mr. Klugman himself was up for a part on Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip (coincidentally as a writer who was blacklisted) and seems glad he didn’t get it. "Who cares about ‘Saturday Night Live’," he says.
   But it’s clear he has fond memories from his two hit series, especially working with Mr. Randall. With Mr. Lauria prodding him a little, Mr. Klugman talks about how the two actors created many of their own laughs for The Odd Couple.
   "You know what the script said? ‘Oscar teaches Felix how to play football,’ followed by four blank pages," Mr. Lauria says. Then the actors would improvise. In that instance, Mr. Randall had Felix line up next to Oscar instead of across from him. Then Mr. Klugman said, "What are we, the Rockettes?" The writers would then work what the actors did into the script.
Of course Mr. Klugman wishes he still had his full voice, but his damaged vocal chords haven’t stopped him from improving his craft. One thing he couldn’t do was cry. He could get to the verge of tears and stop, but couldn’t cry. In 2000 he was doing a play in Coconut Grove, Fla., in which his character’s daughter killed herself. Mr. Klugman used memories of his late step-daughter for the part and during a rehearsal he realized he could cry, but again stopped it.
   "I told the director, ‘Tomorrow I may cry and I may go over, but let me go over,’" he says. "And I did, and that was the last vestige of control I had over myself."
   He’s also reached a comfort level and a fearlessness of the stage. When Mr. Lauria talks about feeling more comfortable on stage than in real life, Mr. Klugman readily agrees.
   "I can eat chicken on the stage but I couldn’t do it at my uncle’s house because I didn’t know what to do," he says. "I am so comfortable on the stage now, whatever I do, if I get up to talk to people, I have no fear."
   Then he shares a story about working with Ethel Mermen in Gypsy and asking her if she had ever had stage fright.
   "She said, ‘Why? I know all the lines.’ She had no fear. I loved that."
The Value of Names will be performed at George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston
Ave., New Brunswick, Nov. 14-Dec. 17. Performances: Tues.-Wed., Fri. 8 p.m.; Thurs.
2, 8 p.m. (no matinee Nov. 16, no performances Nov. 23); Sat. 2, 8 p.m. (no matinee
Dec. 2);, Sun. 2, 7 p.m. (no evening performances Dec. 10, 17). Tickets cost $28-$64.
For information, call (732) 246-7717. On the Web: www.gsponline.org